A rather unusual auction on eBay could appeal to aspiring spies and X‑Files fantasists alike.
A bloke in North Carolina is offering up what is described as a restored 1989 FBI "surveillance" van, complete with listening equipment, LCD monitors, and two DVD players, apparently.
The van, an otherwise not unsettling brown Dodge …

The auctioning of rights to new dot-word top-level domains has finally come to a close with the sale of .stream to portfolio company Famous Four.
In the past week, four other gTLDs - .map, .living, .search and .fun - has also been resolved, with two of them going to Google.
Over the past year, domain-name overseer ICANN has …

The company behind Ping golf clubs and owner of ping.com has paid domain name overseer ICANN $1.5m for the rights to the top-level domain .ping.
The auction pitched it against one other applicant (general registry company Radix) and also included a second internet extension, .srl, which went for $400,000.
The suffix "SRL" is …

AT&T was the biggest spender in the auction for wireless broadband frequencies that closed yesterday – spending $18.2bn to get access to every corner of the US.
Of the remaining $23.1bn spent by telcos, Dish Network was the unexpected second largest shopper with $13.3bn blown on spectrum licenses, followed by Verizon with $10. …

US watchdog the FCC has raised at least US$36bn from telcos by auctioning off a load of radio frequencies for improving wireless broadband.
That's more than three times the $10.1bn it expected – remember that next time your cellphone bill goes up.
While Uncle Sam banks the massive windfall, cell networks can use their newly …

eBay has banned auctions of CDs and merchandise by Norwegian musician Varg Vikernes, on grounds that Vikernes holds views that the company deems offensive.
Heavy metal fan site MetalSucks.net was the first to report on the ban, after an anonymous reader said that when he tried to list two CDs by Vikernes' one-man band Burzum …

One of the rarest comic books of all time is going under the hammer – well, a virtual hammer.
Online auction house Web tat bazaar eBay has said dealer Darren Adams will use the website to sell a nearly pristine copy of Action Comics #1. The legendary 1938 edition from DC Comics features the first appearance of Superman.
The …

The US Marshals Service says the entire hoard of Bitcoins seized from shuttered online drugs souk Silk Road have gone to a single bidder in an auction held on Friday.
The 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins that prosecutors wrested from wallets belonging to Silk Road have an estimated real-world value of around $19m at today's exchange …

Looking to own a piece of space history? Have a spare $50,000 to spend? You may be in luck, as a US auction house is placing a series of artifacts from the US and Soviet space programs on the block.
Auction house Bonhams is set to offer a collection of items ranging from the early first manned spaceflights to the last Apollo …

The US Department of Justice has written to the FCC warning against indiscriminate use of spectrum auctions, arguing that the mantra of "the highest bidder will make the greatest use" is increasingly outdated.
The warning comes in the form of an open letter (PDF, long-winded), just as the FCC is deciding how best to dispose of …

The Kingdom of Bahrain should have completed its 4G auction by now, but instead the process has been kicked into touch following legal action from an excluded operator.
The auction, cleverly titled "Post 3G" (PDF, slide deck with plenty of visuals), was announced last November and initally open to all, but lobbying from the …

The Russian regulator has skipped over all that auction nonsense to award 4G licences to the four network operators, denying licences to three others, but then Russia has had 4G for years.
The state-owned Rostelecom got one licence, surprising no one, and the other three went to Russia's Big Three mobe operators – MTS, …

Everything Everywhere has started consulting on how best to auction off the 30MHz of bandwidth it's required to give up, with a view to turning it into £400m in cash some time next month.
That's according to the Financial Times, who's been talking to the ever-helpful "people familiar with the plan" and heard that the Royal …

The Ministry of Defence is offering shared access to some significant chunks of radio spectrum, though only until 2015 when it expects to sell it off properly.
The chunks up for sharing include 80MHz of spectrum starting at 3500MHz, and 70MHz counting from 3410MHz. But not anywhere near the Olympics, and users will be expected …

Both O2 and BT contend that Ofcom's 4G auction proposals amount to illegal subsidy of their competitors, but all the other network operators are curiously silent on the whole thing.
The 55 responses which are being shared on the Ofcom site range from The Ramblers, whose letter is generally supportive, to Telefonica's 101 pages …

The packaging of radio spectrum often makes a mockery of technical neutrality, and Ofcom's plan for the digital dividend is no exception though the regulator had surprisingly little choice in the matter.
Ofcom's proposal for selling off 250MHz of radio spectrum runs to 555 pages, with annexes and technical reports, but that's …

Ofcom has threatened to put the spectrum used by broadcast TV on the block.
Speaking at this week's Westminster eForum on spectrum policy, Ofcom's Hyacinth Nwana made several references to the 700MHz band that carries about two-thirds of our national (digital) television broadcasting. He said it was "open to discussions" and …

eBay is adding the ability to sell on the move, for those of us (mostly Brits) who find impulse buying isn't enough.
UK shoppers conducted 65 per cent of the mobile business done through eBay in Europe last year, spending a total of £64m. Now that's going to get even easier with new apps for Android and BlackBerry devices, as …